Noodles
by pyrrhicvictoly
Summary: Wherein there are strange cults, stranger rituals, drunken law-making, diabolical plots, cute chickens, tentacle monsters, and brotherly love. Yuuri should have just shut up and enjoyed the party.


It was sixteen and forty-two. Those were the birthdays most important for Mazoku, though Yuuri had still been unable to determine why. Hell, he was still trying to wrap his head around the fact that he had fallen in through a toilet and they had made him king, and this was after decades of being said king. It was tough being the only sane person in a magical kingdom.

Yuuri was trying very hard to be less sane in order to "bond with his peeps", but he still failed to understand the importance of those numbers. His own sixteenth birthday, it being the age of majority in Shin Makoku, had made sense at the time. But that was only because he had been too overwhelmed to do the math.

See, Wolfram had looked sixteen when he had been an octogenarian. If humans aged five times faster than Mazoku, as they said, then at the time Wolfram had his sixteenth birthday, he would have been all of _four years old_, human-wise. This did not make sense. And the more Yuuri thought about it, the more it refused to make sense.

He asked Gunter if "sixteen" meant "the human appearance of sixteen", as in "eighty". Perhaps, for the sake of Yuuri's very human thought processes, they had felt it was best to explain the age of majority to him in those terms. Unfortunately, the answer to that question had been a resounding "no".

He asked, then, if sixteen marked the age of majority because Mazoku had two distinct growth stages. Maybe they were like dogs or something, and they grew up really fast and then slowed down. This theory had merit, Yuuri thought, because that was how things had been for him. He'd had a normal human growth rate until his teenage years when, along with being crowned Toilet King, things had inexplicably slowed down to a fifth of what he was used to. So here he was, in his forties and still looking like he was in his mid-twenties...

The fact that this did not explain Wolfram - who was now old enough to get at least an honorable mention in the Guinness Book of World Records and yet still looked the same age as Yuuri - did not deter him from latching on to this rationalization.

_Meh. It's the difference between pure and mixed blood Mazoku._

The fact that it also failed to adequately explain Conrad - who was slightly more over the hill than even Wolfram and still didn't look a day over thirty - was also not enough to pop Yuuri's bubble.

_Meh. He takes after his mother's super-anti-aging abilities._

No, the death knell came when he asked Gunter to confirm his second theory and received another resounding "no" along with a certain Look that Yuuri had come to associate with "Where do you come up with these crazy ideas?" that people in Shin Makoku often threw his way. True enough, Eru remained a toddler for what felt like _forever_.

(Yuuri decreed, for Nicola's sake, that mothers of hellspawn toddlers were entitled to nationally subsidized daycare. He pawned this proposal off onto Gwendal, claiming that it was in the nation's best interests to protect women's mental health. Anissina agreed and convinced Gwendal that it was in the nation's best interests to protect Gwendal's mental health - which would suffer greatly at her hands if he didn't make this happen - and thus the _Act of the Neverending Terrible Twos _was signed into law.)

Gunter then proceeded to explain that it was _Yuuri's_ aging that had been out of the norm for Mazoku. It was magic and healing that gave Mazoku their very long lives. As long as one had a touch of Mazoku blood and lived among other majutsu-capable people in Shin Makoku, it was possible to absorb the healing magics that permeated the very land. Half-bloods could live just as long as purebloods under the right conditions, but the reason they had historically been looked down upon was because if interbreeding with humans became too common and majutsu ability dropped below a certain point, there wouldn't be enough majutsu in the air and _none_of them would be able to continue having long lifespans. Yuuri would proceed to age as a Mazoku, Gunter said. It was Earth's lack of majutsu that had caused his earlier human-like growth and not anything to do with his human blood.

So he gave up trying to understand why toddlerhood was so important for Mazoku, and he didn't even attempt to understand why forty-two, of all the hundreds of years they could have picked, would also receive this same treatment.

It was just so much easier to shut up and enjoy the party.

~(O-o)~

"Noodles," Yuuri said. He had a sudden craving for yakisoba and other greasy comfort foods.

"N-noodles?" Gunter recoiled from the word, his face contorting into an exaggerated grimace.

"Yeah, noodles. They're long, like a... like a long life. It's like wishing the birthday-person a long life." He was decently sure that this was what they meant, unlike that thing with the mothers/gloves/marriage that he still couldn't remember correctly. Noodles were edible; gloves were not. This was why noodle-idioms had priority over glove-idioms in Yuuri's brain.

"And this is what you do on Earth?"

Yuuri nodded. "Well, some parts of Earth. And only sometimes," he added with a shrug.

After all, people ate whatever they had on hand. Yuuri was pretty sure people didn't do celebrations involving noodles in places where noodles weren't part of the food culture. Like Peru, for example. He'd read somewhere that they ate guinea pigs, and if you lived in the jungles you probably ate your fair share of piranhas, too. Noodles didn't seem high up on their list of things to ascribe symbolic meanings to. And why would they be? It's not like the Andes were great for growing wheat or rice, and it's not like the people would have gone thousands of years on a diet of indigenous grains only to chuck those all to the wayside and run them over with a semi just because their evil colonizers brought them noodles. Noodles were certainly delicious, but he doubted that they had that kind of power over people.

"But Your Majesty, I thought Earth birthdays were celebrated with the red beans and rice you called _sekihan_."

"Yes. That's birthday food, too. For some parts of Earth. Sometimes."

"Then why can we not continue using sekihan?" Gunter asked with a whimper. "Is it so wrong?"

"There's nothing wrong with sekihan, though it's more of a kid thing. I mean, birthdays are more important for kids and all. Let's face it - I'm _old _by Earth standards! Or, well, middle aged... And, y'know, the whole symbolic long life noodle thing kinda kicks in right about now. That, and I'd like to mix things up once in a while. When you do the same thing every year, it just gets tiring."

Gunter wrung his hands, his graceful features scrunched up with worry. He began muttering to himself as he paced the office, and although Yuuri couldn't hear clearly what was being said besides a lot of "oh dears", the king decided that it would be best to assuage Lord von Kleist's fears.

"Look, Gunter, you've got to stop thinking of Earth as a single country, like it's a comparable counterpart to Shin Makoku. Because it's not. It's an entire _world_, like Shin Makoku and Caloria and Francia and Schildkraut and all the others _combined_, that's Earth. So of course it would make sense that there are lots of birthday foods."

Yuuri thought he was being reasonable, but this seemed to send his advisor into a panic all over again. Gunter was a flailing mass of hair, tears, and snot as he crowded into Yuuri's personal space.

"You mean like the rainbow colored cake that Lord Weller brought back that one time? It registered as poisonous on Lady Anissina's scale, Your Majesty! Surely you don't mean to suggest that it's customary for people on 'some parts of Earth' to murder their children with toxic cake!"

"Uh... Are you sure it was poisonous?" Yuuri asked in a squeak.

"If there's one thing the Poison Lady knows, it's poisons!"

"How come I don't remember that?"

"Lord Weller said it was a birthday cake, and that it must be a surprise because that is customary on Earth. When it failed the poison test, it was tossed. We thought it best not to trouble Your Majesty any further. Is Your Majesty suggesting that we should have let the poisonous cake be _served_?"

"Eh... That's... Okay, so there's this country on Earth called 'America', and Conrad spent a lot of time there, and.." At this, Yuuri coughed into his hand. "It messed with his head." Yuuri coughed again before soldiering on. "Ah, and over there they make their cakes rainbow colored. Don't ask me why!" He held up his hands to stave off any interruptions. "They use lots and lots of synthetic food coloring, and that stuff isn't great for you. It's apparently bad enough to register on Anissina's poison scale. But one slice won't kill you, honest! I've had it before and I'm still alive. All it did was stain my tongue blue."

Gunter's lip quivered. He looked like he was about to cry some more, and seriously this time. (Gunter was always crying, but when he was serious about it, the man could really get down to business. He was a veritable master at inconsolable weeping.) But under the weight of his beloved king's puppy eyes, he reluctantly gave in to the noodle plan.

Though Yuuri didn't know it at the time, this was to be a mistake. He really should have taken the easy route - that is, shut up and enjoy the party.

~(o-O)~

The celebrations were scheduled to last a full forty-two hours. During the tail end of the seventh month, the hottest days of the year, that which the more vulgar called "the Devil's sweaty ballsack of summer", there was to be non-stop partying around the capital for nearly two full days. Innumerable Mazoku would fall dead-drunk in the alleyways, and some lady's bouffant would undoubtedly end up on fire despite the "don't drink and cast spells" signs that were posted in the bars.

(This anti-drunk casting initiative was started by Yuuri sometime around Wolfram's hundredth birthday, when they came to the belated conclusion that alcohol and fire majutsu don't mix. Yuuri had done the lettering on the posters, ensuring that they looked like high school science fair trifolds complete with squashed letters along the right edges as he ran out of space. Wolfram had done the illustrations, which he claimed were artist's renditions of gruesome drunk-magery accidents. Though Lord von Bielefelt was not aware of it, a popular drinking game had been created in honor of his art. It was called, "How Many Pints Until That Looks Like Something?")

But the drunken shenanigans first had to be planned by someone, and that someone was the Maou's advisor, Lord Gunter von Kleist. Lord von Kleist was considered one of the most learned men in all of Shin Makoku. If Mazoku were fond of trivia game shows, which they had never heard of, then Lord von Kleist would have been that guy who won them all. And this was on top of being exceptionally beautiful even among a race known for its exceptional beauty, exceptionally ass-kicking in both swordsmanship and magery, and also being the head of an aristocratic house. There was no one better to plan a party. People would come from miles away just for a glimpse of Lord von Kleist.

There was, unfortunately, an oversight in the Maou's plan. Several oversights, in fact. Gunter may have been all those things, but he was also emotionally unstable and had a tendency to both jump to conclusions and go all out in the pursuit of the imaginary goals he thought were the king's. And Yuuri had forgotten to set limits. Yuuri had forgotten to ask someone else to keep an eye on Gunter in case he came up with something nosebleedingly perverted. So many birthdays had passed without incident that Yuuri had forgotten to ask Gunter if there were any strange meanings behind birthday noodles in Shin Makoku's vast collection of outdated rituals that nobody gave a crap about anymore. Nobody but Gunter.

Murata Ken, however, did not forget. If there was one person whose knowledge of Demon lore exceeded that of Lord von Kleist, it was the Great Sage. Murata realized what was happening as soon as he heard Gunter muttering to himself about noodles while searching through the castle's library.

In one of the greatest acts of evil he had committed in his over 4000 years of existence, he let the fiasco happen. The Great Sage smirked as he slid into the shadows. Mazoku were supposed to be _evil_, after all...

~(O-O)~

"Haile Shinou!" cried the man in the glittering purple cloak.

Yuuri couldn't tear his eyes away from the ritual being performed before his eyes. Earlier on, as the festivities were in full swing, Gunter had led the king and his retainers to the viewing platform above the courtyard where they observed as a caravan came up the castle road bearing a group of disco-Satanists.

Or, well, Yuuri wasn't sure what they were supposed to be besides priests of some obscure cult or religious sect or whatever they were calling it these days. And they had a fondness for purple glitter and go-go boots.

Gunter launched into a lesson on the history of Mazoku religious movements. They had once worshipped nature spirits and elementals; after Shinou's death, they switched to dead-king-worship. This sounded pretty much like the history of... of every civilization on Earth, ever.

(The difference was, of course, that Shinou wasn't really dead. Yuuri wondered if being able to chat with god and learn that god had a shitty personality would eventually push the majority of Mazoku toward atheism. Because much as Yuuri respected Shinou's undying dedication - or _deadication_, as Conrad put it - the guy really was kind of a douche. He stole Yuuri's first kiss! Not to mention all the plotting and scheming and perving and stealing Wolfram's body, etc.)

As Gunter rambled on and Yuuri stared in slack-jawed disbelief, Gwendal was frowning and Wolfram was glaring hate-lasers at the obnoxious display. Conrad didn't know how to react; as a result, his smile looked quite pained.

The disco-Satanists formed a circle and waved candles and chanted some stuff about immortal souls. They put their right hands in, put their right hands out, put their right hands in and shook them all about. They spun around and repeated these movements with other body parts. Each time they shook, a disco-Satanic priest would shout, "Haile Shinou!"

On the third such yell, Yuuri turned to Gunter and asked, "What are these guys again?"

"They are Pastafarians, Your Majesty."

"Uh... huh."

"They have your noodles."

"Why are they dancing the hokey pokey instead of cooking my noodles?"

"It's tradition."

The grinding of Gwendal's teeth was loud enough to be heard above the chanting. Conrad's smile twitched and faltered for 0.42 seconds. Wolfram's hate-lasers may or may not have set the sacrificial chicken on fire.

The disco-Satanist in charge of said sacrificial chicken shrugged and placed the roasting bird in the center of their hokey pokey ring.

"Is the chicken supposed to burst into flame?" Yuuri asked.

"It's a torchic," Gunter explained. "They light themselves up all the time, though it happens more often in the presence of powerful fire mages." He nodded toward Wolfram.

Ah, Yuuri thought, so Wolfram only _helped_ the chicken set _itself _on fire. Either way, he was never going to look at chickens the same way again.

"Torchics have been kept as fire mage familiars for millennia," Gunter continued. "They are fiercely loyal and have been known to throw their flaming selves upon the enemy to protect their masters. Fascinating creatures!"

"Hey, Wolfram, how come you don't have a familiar?"

The youngest prince snorted in disdain. "Choosing a familiar is a lifetime commitment. Unlike you, _wimp_, I take my commitments very seriously." _Hint-hint-let's-get-married-you-__**wimp**_. "And besides, a mage of my caliber should be paired with a more majestic creature, like a phoenix or a griffin."

"I dunno," Yuuri said, glancing at the torchic. It stood in the middle of the cloaked figures, puffing up its feathers until they resembled a yellow-chicken-feathery afro of Disco Doom. "That angry chicken nugget kinda suits you."

Wolfram shot Yuuri a look that promised much pain and modeling for portraits that would end up looking more like a floor lamp than a person. Conrad shot Yuuri a look that said he secretly agreed with Yuuri's assessment of his little brother as an angry chicken nugget (whereupon Wolfram elbowed Conrad, and Conrad returned the violence with a squinty-eyed smile so full of understanding and acceptance that Wolfram shivered and surreptitiously scooted away from him a bit. Just a bit. Because it wasn't like he found Conrad's masochism disturbingly guilt-trippy or anything).

And as his younger brothers playfully fought amongst themselves and with the king, Gwendal stared at the torchic, completely in love.

The ritual was nearing its end, and the torchic's fire grew ever brighter. The disco-Satanists broke from their circle with a "Haile Shinou!" and formed a line, marching in place with military precision. They looked to the heavens and saluted their god.

_"Heil Shinou! Heil Shinou!"_

Yuuri scrunched up his nose in distaste. "Are they doing what I think they're doing?"

_"Heil Shinou! Heil Shinou!"_

They were, in fact, doing what he thought they were doing.

"Dude, why can't they just say 'Hail Shinou'? Why do they have to pronounce it like that? It's gonna make me think of them as genocidal maniacs."

Gunter didn't even turn to address his king because the answer to this was the same as the answer to everything else. "It's tradition," he said as he continued to observe the festivities.

Cultural miscommunications aside, genocide was, in fact, a Mazoku tradition.

_"Haile Shinou!"_

~(O-o)~

Meanwhile, deep within the dank bowels of the castle dungeons, a monster stirred. It had been centuries since it had last been summoned, but it had never forgotten its promise to the great king who first tamed it.

The fragile mortals above, they chanted His name and lit the way with the sacred beacon. It was time to rise.

It wiggled in glee at the prospect of once again tasting the sweet flesh of the sacrifice.

~(o-O)~

"Now what?"

"Now we wait, Your Majesty."

"Wait for what?"

"The high priest will call you when the spell is complete." Gunter said.

The leader of the cult held the torchic over his head and began to chant in an ancient tongue. It was not the modern Mazoku language, nor any of the lingua francas they used to communicate with the human nations of this world. It definitely wasn't any Earth language that Yuuri knew of.

_"Adgt vpaah zong om faaip sald chicken cacciatore!"_

Somehow, though, some of the words sounded... familiar... He shook his head. "So then what? When do the noodles come into the picture?"

_"Micama goho Satan, zir comselh pesto carbonara stroganoff!"_

"The flame and the black mist will rise; the noodles will descend. So it is written."

_"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Swedish Meatball wgah'nagl fhtagn!"_

"Could you be more specific about that?"

A thin trail of blood escaped Gunter's elegant nose.

_"Chow fun! Penne! Chow mein!"_

Yuuri whipped his head around so fast he thought for sure he'd get whiplash. He pinched himself because he couldn't believe he'd heard that.

_"I-ya i-ya macaroni-ya! Micaolz bransg prgel-spätzle!"_

"It is done," Gunter said. He indicated for Yuuri to step down to the waiting priests, blood still trickling from his nose.

Yuuri looked to his other friends for moral support, but they appeared as uncomfortable as he felt. Conrad shrugged as if to say Yuuri didn't have to go if he didn't want to, but if he wanted to, Conrad would go with him if he asked. Wolfram glowered as if to say that Yuuri was a wimp if he needed Conrad to hold his hand just to go get some stupid noodles. What was he? That one girl who can never go to the toilet without all her friends? If he took Conrad up on that offer, Yuuri would be the wimpiest wimpy wimp among wimpy wimp wimp wimp wimp. Wimp.

(Gwendal continued to stare at the torchic. There were hearts in his eyes.)

~(O-O)~

Murata strode into Shinou's temple as if he owned the place, which he did. After all, he pretty much owned Shinou, who was a god of sorts. The owner of the owner was the real owner, wasn't that how things went? Yuuri might have stronger majutsu (due to his being alive) and a more benevolent style of rule, but Shinou was by far the more cunning king, and if they were to seriously battle each other one on one, Murata would put his bets on Shinou if only because the pervert would grope Yuuri to distraction to secure his win. And Murata had Shinou under his thumb. This meant that Murata was, if one were to look at the situation logically, the most powerful entity in all of Shin Makoku, and maybe The World. It was a good thing he was only evil - as opposed to _Evil _- for the lulz.

Musings aside, he had business to discuss with Shinou, who was currently incorporeal, his spirit spread across the air of the temple's inner sanctum. Shinou lazily pulsed a 'hello' as Murata stepped past the marble columns and to the central dais where Ulrike stood. The priestess bowed to him and left him to speak with the spirit of the first king.

"They're summoning your noodles," Murata said.

Shinou pulsed his acknowledgement.

"So I'll see you there? Or do you want a ride?"

Shinou pulsed in the negative. No, he didn't want to turn fun-sized and sit on Murata's shoulder. He would rather join the party in spirit form where he could wreak havoc without people noticing.

"Oh, by the way, I spread Pastafarianism to Earth some years ago. I forgot to mention that to you."

Shinou was pleased.

~(O-o)~

The high priest held the flaming chicken aloft in one hand while he extended the other to his king. Yuuri sighed through his nose and decided to just get this over with quickly before he changed his mind. He stepped down from the viewing platform to the courtyard, took the priest's hand, and was led into the circle.

As soon as he was in place, Yuuri felt a rumbling from the ground almost as if Gwendal were creating an earthquake. Instead of cracks appearing in the soil and bedrock, there was a hissing sound, and Yuuri looked down at his feet. Abruptly, the shaking stopped, but the hissing grew louder. Tendrils of black smoke seeped through the ground around Yuuri's feet, curling around his body, swirling and caressing.

The high priest placed the torchic on Yuuri's head, and the wispy darkness danced around them both. It thickened and exploded upward in a plume like a mushroom cloud, scattering the cultists in every direction.

Distantly, Yuuri heard Conrad unsheathe his sword and come charging through the inky veil, slipping in right before it thickened into an impenetrable wall and trapped them in the eye of the storm, but the larger part of his mind was distracted by the... thing.

"What _is _that thing?!"

"Yuuri! Are you all right?"

"Conrad, what is that _thing_?"

Conrad cocked his head to the side in confusion. When Yuuri insistently pointed at the sky, he tore his gaze away from the Maou-with-a-flaming-chicken-attached-to-his-head and upwards to the... thing.

High above the courtyard, the rising black substance coalesced into a wriggling glob not unlike a hunk of sentient noodles. The flame and the black mist rose; the noodles descended. So it was written, and so it happened.

The thing gracefully fluttered down toward them and daintily set itself down on two noodle-limbs. It waved the others at them and said, "Splortch."

"I thought Gunter said that stuff about flame and black smoke because they were going to cook noodles, not..." Yuuri waved his hands around, gesturing at the thing. "This. Thing."

Conrad touched his hand to his chin and contemplated the thing. "Well, that was a prophecy, and you know how ambiguous prophecies usually are."

"Splortch," said the thing.

"This sucks."

Before Conrad could reply, the thing shot out its many noodle-limbs. Yuuri's eyes widened as he saw them approaching, and he tried to make a break for it, but skidded to a halt before hitting the swirling black wall and tripped over himself trying to turn around. The next thing he knew, slimy noodles had wrapped all around him, covering him like a mummy, and he was being pulled toward the thing.

"Yuuri!" Conrad's sword swung out, cutting a deep gash in one of the offending tentacles.

The noodle monster roared and lashed out even as its wound healed. Conrad ducked around and came at it from the other side. Each injury he inflicted began to heal as soon as it was received. Sensing that Conrad was more of a threat than Yuuri at this point, the noodles began to go after him en masse.

Conrad, too, was dragged to his carb-laden demise.

~(o-O)~

A crowd had gathered outside the vortex. It was mostly the travelling priests coming together to admire their handiwork, though they were joined by a few of the castle's maids and the Maou's remaining retainers.

Lord von Bielefelt, having charged after his brother, remained steadfast in his efforts to break through the barrier created by the raging black winds. He'd been just a moment too late to make it in, and now it seemed impossible. He couldn't approach, and his magic was of no use. The winds blew all his fire attacks off their course; he didn't dare try a larger summoning with civilians around.

"Shit! How do you _always _manage to end up in trouble?" Wolfram cursed the Maou under his breath and stepped back a few paces to size up the obstacle. He had no idea how he was supposed to take down a stationary tornado.

Gwendal, still standing on the viewing platform with Gunter, narrowed his eyes in suspicion at his friend's uncharacteristic level of calm. Usually, Gunter was the first to fly into hysterics at even the tiniest of dangers coming to their king, but there was not a tear in sight. Gunter was completely dry-eyed, though his nose was a different matter.

"Tell me, Gunter, what's going on?"

Lord von Kleist dabbed at his nose with his handkerchief, which was spotted with blood. He made the action seem as dignified as possible, which wasn't very dignified at all even if it was more dignified than anyone else could have managed.

"Rest assured, His Majesty is in no danger."

"How do you know?"

"The noodles have been summoned before, of course. There are extensive records of past summonings in the archives, and no one has ever come to harm. The noodles formed a pact with Shinou to make love, not war."

Gwendal shook his head and snorted. "It's frivolous, all of it. We should have just sent someone to Earth to get cup noodles."

Gunter gasped his indignation. "Lord von Voltaire! Cup noodles, really? That is an affront to the noodles of Shin Makoku!"

"The noodles of Shin Makoku, whose existence no one even remembered until today, must be ritualistically summoned. Cup noodles are ready in three minutes," Gwendal said pragmatically.

Gunter was about to object - _he_had remembered the noodles - but it was then that the Great Sage, Murata Ken, appeared behind the two lords with a large bucket of popcorn. He placed himself front and center. "Best seat in the house! Popcorn, anyone?"

"Oh, thank you." Gunter graciously accepted a small handful.

"And you, Lord von Voltaire?"

"No thanks."

Murata shrugged and fixed his attention back on the main event. "Where's Lord Weller? Is he already in there, too? That would make things easier..."

~(O-O)~

Conrad and Yuuri were covered in some sort of sauce. It looked like tomato, but neither of them wanted to make sure.

It was a strange feeling, being wrapped in squirming noodles that left sauce trails all over one's body... Yuuri was very freaked out about this; especially the part where it tickled. Conrad was attempting to maintain stoic enough for the both of them, though this was getting increasingly difficult as noodles continued to wetly smack him in the face.

The glob of noodles had two large meatballs, each easily twice the size of a man's head, which served as... eyes? They were positioned correctly for eyes, but the creature would sometimes lower its meatballs to press a meaty kiss to its captives' heads, slurpy and wet like an overenthusiastic aunt.

"Hey, Conrad, is the mist disappearing?"

Conrad's affirmative reply was replaced by a grunt as a noodle flapped across his lips. That was good enough for Yuuri, who squirmed with renewed vigor as he began to notice people-like shapes that he hoped were going to rescue them.

(He also squirmed because, for some inexplicable reason, he thought the noodles were attempting to play footsie with him. Insofar as it was possible for a noodle-limbed creature to play footsie...)

"Guys, a little help here?" he called to the crowd. "We're stuck! This thing won't let us go and oh my god where is it touching?! We have to do something, Conrad, th-they're _touching _me!"

"Hang on! We'll get through-"

Conrad was abruptly cut off. Yuuri looked over to see his friend's eyes had gone wide. The noodles had decided to go a bit further than playing footsie.

…

Yuuri's strangled scream cut across the courtyard as the last of the smoke dissipated. The noodles had begun to squish under his clothes, and it was this sight that the onlookers were treated to as the curtains parted: the Maou and his guard, standing waist-deep in a mass of sleazy tentacles doing unspeakably dirty things to them.

The noodle creature carried its prey with it as it rose to hover a few feet off the ground. It jiggled a bit and produced the tiny torchic that had gotten lost within its noodling, spitting the bird out to roll off in an unconscious heap of singed feathers.

Wolfram readied his sword and frantically tried to think up battle plans. Strategy was failing him when faced with that thing and what it was doing. The overriding thought in his mind was that he had to do _something _before this abominable violation became more of a public spectacle than it already was. He gripped the blade tighter and prepared to charge.

"Wolfram, help!"

"Stay back!" Conrad shouted at the same time.

The warning came too late. Wolfram had already dashed within reach of the noodles and was attempting to clear a path through them.

"No! Get out while you still can!"

Again, too late. Lord Weller's valiant attempts to spare his brother this indignity were in vain. When Wolfram came to the realization that his attacks didn't bother the monster at all, a noodle had already wrapped around his ankle. And when he decided it would be best to heed his honorable brother's advice to live and roast monsters another day, a frisky noodle spanked his bum and caused him to lose his concentration for just that one second necessary to bring the proud prince down.

Wolfram's hands scrabbled against the dirt for his sword. The noodles dragged him in feet first.

~(O-o)~

Gunter's nosebleed had died down as he enjoyed the popcorn, but returned full force at the sight of his beloved Maou writhing and panting in mid-air. The blood gushed out of his nostrils, spraying like a garden hose. When he fell, horribly staining his white uniform in the process, the resulting picture was like that of a messy crime scene. Lord von Kleist was down for the count. The only point of contention was whether he had passed out from blood loss, from the sudden southerly flow of said blood, or a combination of both.

"It's a pity he won't get to see the rest of the show," Murata said. He waved some guards over to take care of their downed companion before returning to his popcorn. "Whoo! Go Shinou!"

"Haile Shinou!" the priests chorused.

Gwendal took this moment to bury his head in his hands. Then he sighed and, leaving the idiots to do whatever idiocy would take to stop the idiocy, he went to pick up that poor torchic, being very careful to stay away from Mr. Grabby-tentacles. He steadfastly kept his eyes from meeting the pleading ones of the Maou.

Once the torchic was safe in his arms, Gwendal allowed himself a secret dopey smile.

~(o-O)~

Yuuri's control over his majutsu had improved a lot over the years, but it still wasn't the best; not by a long shot. He was good at healing, and making rain - misty drizzles and sparse fat droplets were his favorites - and going into a berserker rage and destroying everything within a five mile radius. So yeah, there was room for improvement.

It was that vast middle ground between healing and total annihilation that he had trouble with. This was very inconvenient, because the good stuff was always in the creamy center.

Currently, Yuuri was trying to remain in control, as panic had the unfortunate effect of bringing out his OMGKILLITDEAD side. There were good people around (and some disco-Satanists). He did not want to kill them dead (except maybe the Satanists). If the situation were different - perhaps less holy-shit-noodles-are-crawling-up-my-pant-leg, he could have mustered up a decent water dragon that would attack the noodles without also bringing a flood down on his own citizens and smashing down some castle walls.

Yuuri could feel a stinging behind his eyes that alerted him to how close he was to losing it and going JUSTICE on this thing's ass, consequences be damned. Looking over at Conrad and Wolfram's struggling only made it worse.

The brothers were pressed together, chest to chest as the noodles slipped and slid around them. They were bound in a sensuous dance, forced to rub against each other with the lubricating sauce between them. Wolfram, brave and headstrong as he was, had attempted to gnaw the tentacles to death, but that just let the monster shove its indestructible noodles in his mouth.

And poor Conrad kept apologizing in hushed whispers even though none of it was his fault in the slightest, it was just...

YOU WILL NOT TENTACLE RAPE MY FRIENDS IN MY CASTLE, NOT WHILE I'M KING.

He blew up.

~(O-O)~

When Yuuri came to, it was to the sight of a broken mass of noodles littering the dirt of the courtyard. It said "JUSTICE".

This was nothing new. What was new was that Conrad and Wolfram were studiously avoiding each other's eyes, and Murata was only making things worse by saying, "Well, you're only _half_-brothers, so it's only _half_-incest..." and there was a chicken on top of Wolfram's head that wouldn't come down no matter how Gwendal tried to win its affections, and Gwendal was trying not to show how crushed he was even though it was obvious that he always took it hard when he was rejected by cute things, and Gunter was being tended to by the maids because he was still passed out and still sporting a boner, and the disco-Satanists were sitting and weeping in a magic circle around a lone meatball which slowly disintegrated until it was revealed to be a fun-sized Shinou, who had undoubtedly been possessing the creature to do perverted things to Yuuri and his friends just as it had possessed Wolfram to steal Yuuri's first kiss back in the day, that dirty rotten bastard, and it was the

"Worst. Birthday. Ever. We are never doing this again."

So sayeth Toilet King, and his vassals obeyed.

~(X-X)~

* * *

**Notes:**I'm going to pretend that everyone got my jokes and references. I totally got my jokes and I still don't understand half of what I wrote, so it's not you. It's really not. I guess I'll attempt to explain...

Pokemon.

Okay, fine. Notes for real this time...

**1)** Yes, the disco-Satanists are Rasta-Nazis. Yes, Shinou is Hitler. He is also Haile Selassie.

**2)** Murata is a backstabbing troll and he only let this happen to get revenge on Shinou for his wandering hands. Being blown up by Yuuri hurt like a bitch, especially the damage that was done to Shinou's meatballs. Murata found this all to be very lulzy. His advice to Conrad and Wolfram was well-meaning, though, because Murata is also an expert on half-incest, having been shagging his half-brother Shinou for thousands of years.

**3)** The line breaks are little FSMs. If you put them all together, it kind of looks like they're dancing with their cute little meatball-eyes. Except that last one. It's dead. In his house at Meatball, dead Swedish waits dreaming.

**4)** This is what happens when KKM gets simmered in the juices of the Cthulhu mythos and served at a Pastafarian potluck alongside magic brownies. I threw in some copypasta phrases from LaVeyan Satanic chants for extra flavor. RAmen!

**5)** ...But seriously, though, Wolfram and his torchic were having such a great time together that Yuuri eventually got himself a mudkip, and then Gwendal was even more jealous and scoured the world before he ended up with a cute baby dwebble. Effin' cutest thing EVAR. (Conrad has a jigglypuff lololol. And Josak has a skitty and Gunter has a beautifly. Shut up. You know it fits.)

**6)** ...But for real for serious, I tried to make this a ConYuuWolf threesome. Honestly, I tried. They were supposed to have bonding times while being groped by noodle tentacles, and in the happy ending, Wolfram was supposed to be like, "You're a shitty fiance, Yuuri. You want to screw my brother? I'll show you how to screw my brother!1!" and then he tops the hell out of Conrad. It's just that, somewhere along the way... I failed terribly.


End file.
